The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

By Oafkad on July 10, 2018

I’ve never been very good at writing reviews. I’m going to immediately start this off by telling you that I love this game. Something I’ve never liked on other review websites is that long plodding question of whether or not the person liked it.

You’ll get paragraph through paragraph thinking they liked it only to see a 4 at the end. Or they’ll complain for 30 minutes and give it a 9. That’s why you won’t find number scores here. I’m going to tell you the emotional response I got to the game.

Basically everything about the Witcher 3 works for me. Where to start is the hardest part. I’ve been on a quest to get Platinum in it. You’d think for a game as enormous as this that I’d be annoyed on this journey. But for the most part the tasks that are set out for me are things that I enjoy doing anyways.

I like finding new locations on the map to battle monsters, destroy nests, save prisoners from bandits, etc. I like riding in a boat and crossbowing sirens in the face as they try to get onto my ship and kill me. Their beautiful faces warping into angler fish like horrors just before they strike.

I enjoy meeting new NPCs and seeing exclamation points pop up as I wander around the map. Each side quest ends up having a quality to it that is often missed in other games. The side quests of the Witcher 3 are as good, and at times better, than the main content of other games I’ve played.

Geralt as a person is someone I’d strive to be. At least with the options I choose. He is compassionate and powerful. He uses the gifts thrust upon him by the Witcher mutations to save countless people and to try his best to improve the world. Does he always succeed? No. But whether or not that is because of my own poor skills is yet unknown.

As it stands I’ve nearly seen every single point on all of the maps provided with the base game of Witcher 3 and I’ve unlocked most of the achievements that don’t involve beating the game or other combat tricks.

“But Oaf, you are reviewing a game you haven’t finished?” Indeed I am. Because I don’t know what it could do at this point. There is no twist or turn during the 11th hour of this game that could leave me not loving it.

Geralt could explode in a fiery ball of gore and I’d still be happy about the journey that lead up to that moment. I hope that he doesn’t but only time will tell.

The tools provided to you as a Witcher are all pretty fun for me to use. I like applying oils and having that stack with the poison buff you can acquire during leveling. A system I am poorly explaining but may remember to include an image of later. Basically talent trees exist for all the different ways you could play Witcher 3, combat, alchemy, and spellcasting. You can choose to dump your points into any of them specifically or spread your points out for more of a Geralt of all trades.

My favorites are the Axii line in magic, the poison in alchemy, and the left side of the combat grid. They allowed me to deal enormous amounts of damage to monsters (and humans) that were far above my pay grade.

That’s another one of those features of the game that really speaks to me. Being able to fight things well beyond your level if you wished to take on the risk. Knowing that at any moment a single hit from the other monster would kill you.

I honestly could rant and rave about the game forever. I know that’s what folks generally try to do when they write reviews. Gotta look smart, you know? But the best I can tell you at this point is that I really enjoyed myself. This game has been, and likely will continue to be, a source of amazing content.

I am deeply excited to play through the DLC once I finish the main game and I’ll certainly write a bit about those when that time comes. Additionally, assuming I do not forget, there will be a video companion to this review if you wish to watch that instead of read this.

Which, I realize now, will probably be at the top of this review. So you already know if it was there or not…